Plane fanatic John Davis lives the dream in his spare bedroom – where he has built a jumbo jet cockpit so that he can “fly” around the world.

He sits in front of a giant screen and has a bird’s eye view of continents as he pilots his mighty “aircraft” across Europe or to New York.

The flight deck boasts a £15,000 simulator which recreates every switch and sound on a Boeing 747.

Divorced John, 47, can listen to the rumble of the mighty engines as he thunders down the runway, and his eyes flick across nine monitors and 90 switches as the “aircraft” climbs into the skies.

Sitting in his leather flight chair – an old car seat – he lifts the undercarriage, switches to automatic pilot and settles back to enjoy the ride. He can even make announcements to his imaginary passengers.

John, who holds a pilot’s licence to fly gliders, has now quit his job as a graphic designer to run a flight simulation business from his two-bedroomed terraced house in Tile Hill, Coventry. He charges £65 for an hour and £95 for two. A £220, four-hour session includes two of training and a simulated flight from Birmingham to Amsterdam.

He said yesterday: “I have always wanted to be a pilot but I was never any good at maths – so this is the next best thing.

“I have spent eight years and thousands of man hours working to make the simulator as lifelike as possible. It has been hard, sometimes frustrating work. It hasn’t come cheap, either.

“I had to study photographs of a real Boeing 747-400 cockpit on aviation websites to make sure the design was correct.

I have always wanted to be a pilot but I was never any good at maths – so this is the next best thing

John Davis

“The software has all the landscapes of the world, from the Alps to the skylines of London and New York – and security procedures mean you can no longer visit the flight deck of a real plane.

“It is the perfect place to unwind.

“Friends have even said they would love their own flight simulators because it is somewhere they could go to drown out their wives’ nagging.”